It wasn't always like this. From the 1930s through the 1980s, the commodities market was strictly regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (oil is a commodity, just like tin or corn or copper); there were limits placed on speculators in order to stave off market manipulation unrelated to real supply and demand. Only a small percentage of commodities could be bought and sold by "paper traders;" the rest was reserved for people who were actually dealing with tangible stuff — growers, producers, consumers.

But in the early 1990s, the CFTC granted a number of clandestine exemptions to those limitations, which allowed Wall Street traders to flood the markets. "By 2008, at least three quarters of the activity on the commodity exchanges was speculative," Rolling Stone scribe Matt Taibbi wrote in his 2010 must-read article, "The Great American Bubble Machine" (really, go read it now: tinyurl.com/taibbispeculators). "It was a repeat of both the Internet craze and the housing bubble, when Wall Street jacked up present-day profits by selling suckers shares of a fictional fantasy future of endlessly rising prices."

Translation: The same people who screwed us into this recession mess, who got their big bailouts from the government — they're behind high gas prices, too. At least now, when you're cursing the $40-plus it takes to fill up your tank, you know whom to be shaking your fist at.

While politicians may think we're too dense to digest this information in soundbites, they know the problem exists. To that end, on April 17, the White House proposed a five-part piece of legislation that would "crack down" on manipulation in oil markets. The plan includes increasing surveillance and enforcement staff at the CFTC; upgrading monitoring equipment; increasing civil and criminal penalties for manipulation in oil futures markets; raising the "margin requirements" on oil futures (i.e., the amount of real money behind a trade); and expanding presidential advisers' access to CFTC data.

But while enforcement is great, USM's Feiner doesn't think Obama went far enough. "The only way to get speculators out of futures markets for petroleum products is to revoke the exemptions," she says. Seeing as how those exemptions are held by the financial behemoths (or their subsidiaries) who run Washington, that prospect is unlikely.

And it couldn't hurt to increase public awareness. "There really hasn't been a public discussion about what is going on," she adds. Shocking, huh?

Smoke Local Lobsters, blueberries, potatoes, and . . . pot? As Maine's medical-marijuana program inches closer to business-as-usual, weed is on the verge of becoming a meaningful part of the state's economy — a budding piece of Maine's local, sustainable, pro-agriculture aesthetic.

Keep your money in Maine You're short on cash. Local businesses are short on cash. But you probably didn't know that even your local bank is short on cash.

The price you pay Debt is a fundamental part of American life. Car payments. Mortgages. Partially unpaid bills from irate Colombian hookers.

Chafee’s number This week, we continue with a running feature, the Gubernatorial Scorecard. Every so often, we'll rate Lincoln Chafee from 1 to 10 on both the politics and substance of his most recent maneuverings.

Three-city news war The Portland Press Herald is really under the gun right now, from within and without its walls.

Occupy Providence on the march It's 11:30 am on Day 3 of Occupy Providence and a small group of activists has gathered at the foot of a statue in Burnside Park to plot a march on Bank of America's Kennedy Plaza branch.

Funeral recession These days, practically nothing is immune to the economy's woes — not even an industry that caters to what would seem to be the one recession-proof commodity: death.

Like Christmas in the spring State officials say that Maine stands to receive approximately $900 million via that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act we've heard so much about.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE | July 24, 2014 When three theater companies, all within a one-hour drive of Portland, choose to present the same Shakespeare play on overlapping dates, you have to wonder what about that particular show resonates with this particular moment.

CHECKING IN: THE NEW GUARD AND THE WRITER'S HOTEL | July 11, 2014 Former Mainer Shanna McNair started The New Guard, an independent, multi-genre literary review, in order to exalt the writer, no matter if that writer was well-established or just starting out.

NO TAR SANDS | July 10, 2014 “People’s feelings are clear...they don’t want to be known as the tar sands capitol of the United States."